This morning I attended an event hosted by Joe Wallin, attorney at Davis Wright Tremaine and founder of Startup Law Blog. Joe had Greg Gottesman, managing director of venture capital firm Madrona Venture Group, in the house for a Q&A session that began with some stories about Greg’s background and a successful business that he spawned out of a startup weekend. The session also touched on the importance of patents to early stage companies, what he considers to be differentiating factors of successful companies, and implications of the lifting of the ban on general solicitation (effective today) for companies hoping to rely on an exemption under Regulation D as they look to raise funding. The hour-long discussion gave attendees the opportunity to present questions to one of the top venture capital funders in the Seattle area. Below are some highlights of the meeting based on my notes and recollection. Building Your Moat The session started with a question about businesses with “sharing economy” models, such as Rover.com, and whether Madrona had any others in its portfolio. Greg mentioned this as a growing area, and that he had thought of several other ideas, including connecting personal chefs with hungry households, and renting out extra storage space in people’s garages and homes. The problem was that every time he came up with an idea, it seemed as if someone had already started a corresponding business somewhere, and he then lost interest. One problem with this model, he said, was that it is very difficult to build this sort of company up from scratch and gain a critical mass of users in...